


Summary and Analysis of The Picture of Dorian Grey

by Lue4028



Category: Dorian Gray (2009), The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Dorian Grey - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 22:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is Dorian Grey a sympathetic character?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summary and Analysis of The Picture of Dorian Grey

A reviewer might feel compelled to say Dorian Grey is not a sympathetic character, such as this one here for example:

"I could feel no sympathy for Dorian Gray. Why? Because he never took responsibility for his actions. Being accountable for one's own actions is a crucial aspect of self-development, at least in my humble opinion. If a person cannot do that, they are doomed to eternal immaturity. This was Dorian's fate... All the people he ruined in his relentless pursuit of pleasure and debauchery ruined themselves. He took no part in their ruination. Ultimately, he even blamed the picture, and sought to destroy it as the only true evidence of his black soul. I feel like this: If you're going to be a bad, selfish person, own up to it. Don't try to act like your sins should be laid at other people's feet. That was the route the Mr. Dorian Gray took. At the end of the day, I believe that Dorian Gray led a worthless life. His eternal youth counted for nothing. He never grew as a person, and he used the bounteous gifts he'd been given selfishly. He did horrible things that made it even worse. He was lucky in that he didn't live long enough to count the full cost of those actions. He allowed the portrait to take the weight of those sins intead of letting them rest where they belonged. If anything really bothers me as a person, it's the thought of my time on this earth being wasted. Never having accomplished anything of value. For that reason, I found Dorian Gray to be a very sad man, but I could not feel sorry for him."

So how did I come to leave this work feeling like there was an actual hole in my chest from all the sympathy I felt? Because I recognized him. Dorian Grey is a literal example of what happens to every human being as they age- most vividly to their soul, to my soul, to your soul, to this reviewer's soul- visualized by linking the aesthetic to the moral. For this reason, by the end of the book, he is not despicable for killing his creator and champion of his soul for purely selfish exploits, and not hypocritical for being afraid of death himself, because this is the tragedy of every old man- Dorian's life is a perfect portrait of the life every human being lives.  
"In the main body of the book, the allusions to Dorian’s immoral activities are vague, thus inviting the readers to fill out these foggy, indeterminate references to veiled corruption with their own sordid fantasies... in his reply to The Scots Observer, Wilde can say with some accuracy: “Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray’s sins are no-one knows. He who finds them has brought them.”  
He is still the beautiful embodiment of youth and purity he was before, as depicted so poignantly in his young face, only yoked to the terrible weight and pain of his sins. This condition is not such an unfamiliar one. It is the human condition, carrying baggage, burdens, regrets, mortal predicaments. The brutal truth about Dorian is that he is deeply, unmistakably relatable. The painting in the darkest parts of his house gives a literal metaphor for the pain and suffering hidden in the darkest recesses of the mind. It is this metaphor that is so horrible so as to bring conflict to the entire plot, because these metaphysical concepts are too powerful to exist as anything other than ghosts that flutter in our peripheral vision- and facing one's true self as one faces a painting is like walking into the fires of the sun.

  
The mistake that a sociopath makes is the inability to distinguish between what's real and what's art (an intellectual game). Dorian makes this mistake by falling in love with what an actress appears to be, not who they are.  
"Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all."  
In the novel, the painting becomes him. Art becomes real, and if we reverse all the supernatural elements to pyschological terror, we see that the tearing-apart that guilt does to the soul can be held accountable for all the unrealistic things detailed in the book. The surrealism is Dorian Grey's own madness, in which his guilt becomes externalized, his soul the antagonist, and an internal battle is brought out into the open, where the casualties are the crossfire that fuel the indignation of the painting.

It is important to look at all the examples of purity in the book, Dorian's personality and relationship with his creator, to understand what is lost in the battle of time.  
"When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body.

As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart. "How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that -- for that -- I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" Dorian says that if he ever becomes old, he will kill himself. He accuses Basil of liking his art more than his friends, and that worse still Basil will no longer like him when he becomes old."I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say. I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my fist wrinkle, I suppose. When one looses their good looks, one looses everything." Basil tries to console him, asking if he is really jealous of material things when Dorian is so much more beautiful.  
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore himself away, and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions.  
Basil decides to destroy the painting in favor of his friend, "'I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it.' Dorian Grey lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with a pallid face and tear-stained eyes looked at him. His fingers were straying about amount the the litter of tin tubes and brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette knife, with its thin blade no lithe steel, He had found it at last. He as going to rip up the canvas.  
With a stifled sob the lad leaped up from the couch, and, rushing over to Basil, tore the knife out of his hand and flung it to the end of the studio. 'Don't Basil, don't!' He cried, 'It would be murder.'  
'I am glad you appreciate my work at last Dorian,' said the painter, coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. 'I never thought you would.'  
'Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is a part of myself. I feel that.'"  
In contrast to what he becomes, the characteristics of Dorian's youth, naïveté and modesty turned to vanity, are apparent at different points during the creation of the painting.

Dorian sees the painting that revealed his beauty contort into monstrosity because of the crimes he commits, but this was only his own fancy, a manifestation of his guilt.

Dorian's greatest crime is when he kills his creator and the man who loves him, a painter and a painting serving as a beautiful metaphor for God bringing a soul to life.  
"I know you will laugh at me, but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself in it. Without intending it, I have put some of the expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. "  
The painting begins as a representation of "The harmony of soul and body- how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two," but will later portray the antithesis, "an invented realism that is vulgar, a reality that is void. Harry! If only you knew what Dorian Grey is to me."  
Basil's relationship with Dorian becomes a burden to Dorian, but is likewise his only hope of salvation, and in killing him he forsakes himself to death by the same weapon and executioner. This is foreshadowed by Basil's first impression of him "I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then--but I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room."

He kills the creationist love for him because he can't bear his own existence, how it's forced him to face his guilt every day and know it's lurking monstrously in his vaults, to bear and uphold the dichotomy of his secrets and innocence, and how relentless and unforgiving it still is after what it's done to him. In their last conversation, Dorian not only no longer enjoys Henry's compliments, he suffers through them and the disillusionment the part he must play, unable to confess what he's done, how he's so dreadfully not what Henry describes him to be.  
Pointedly not by revenge (James Vane), justice (Sybyl Vane's inquest), or divine retribution (Basil's disappearance), Grey is killed by his own humanity, of his own accord.  
"Nor, indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait that had done everything."  
Dorian Grey poignantly destroys himself, by stabbing himself in the soul.  
"Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure, swift penalty along with it. It had kept him awake at night. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. He would destroy it. It would kill the past, and when that was dead he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and, without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it. There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke, and crept out of their rooms. The found hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seem him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart." He is not changed from the young innocence captured on the canvas to a hedonist or a monster by a Faustian deal with the devil, all men have heaven and hell between them.

The Picture of Dorian Grey deals with mortality, morality, and humanity. The book was censored and a failure in its time because the material was contentious and considered immoral. Wilde responded to these accusations with the statement "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." It seems Wilde sides best with the character of Lord Henry and his indifference toward morality, and it's not surprising- because Lord Henry is the most powerful and strongly written character.  
But what did Wilde do? He joined asthetics to morality- and this applies to his work. The reason it is an aesthetic book, is because it is fundamentally moral. Despite Wilde's claims he was not trying to prove anything, whether or not The Picture Dorian Grey is a book with a moral is hardly a question. Dorian Grey is the greatest book and the only book to have shown morality for what it really is because it gives it a face. Dorian goes through life until he has a full, experienced knowledge of what it means to have guilt and pays terribly for his actions. The painting never forgives him. Because Dorian Grey is a man cut in half, no other story will be able to come between a man to find a moral resolution as this work has so powerfully done, by creating physical protagonist and antagonist that are one and the same person. The tragic reality of this situation means that here is no way to save the innocent protagonist, and kill the sinful antagonist- the only resolution being mutual destruction.  
Morality is aestheticism. Dorian is repulsive when he is immoral and the reader can hardly bare to look at him after he's killed Basil. Dorian is ultimately a beautiful, sympathetic character when he is moral, when he is shocked by Henry's philosophies in the beginning and when he wisely and heroically rejects Henry's philosophies at the end.  
Dorian Grey is the development of the utmost self love into the ultimate self hate. At one point kisses himself, in another he looks at the mirror and smashes it to pieces."He had once, as a boyishly unrestrained Narcissus, kissed the painted lips of the portrait which now laughed so fearfully at him. Morning after morning had he sat before the picture and marvelled at its beauty, often had he fallen into an ecstasy."  
"The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: 'The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.' The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself. Then he loathed his own beauty, and, flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain." This is the moment where Dorian is eventually forced to reconcile with the fact that his beauty is his morality, that humanity is the only thing worth having. This is portrayed even better in the 2009 movie, rather than the book. We see him apologize and care for a man who wanted to kill him, desperately wanting to confess to his crimes to Emily and the priest, crumble with guilt in Emily's arms, and willfully kill himself despite Emily trying to convince him to let her save him. The thing he desperately wants back is his soul, defending and vying for morality and dying as a martyr for its cause. The appeal of the book is that it speaks so profoundly to morality, to immorality, and to humanity.


End file.
